The Brief | Tehran’s “Peace Offer” Is a No
Plus: Virginia Dems plot to clear the bench, April jobs blow past forecasts, Biden runs to court to bury the Hur tapes, and Trump heads to Beijing.
It’s Monday,
I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend, and for the moms, a beautiful Mother’s Day filled with love and relaxation. 💖
ICYMI
Desk Notes: Callais Is Reshaping the House Map - Here's How
Friday is for errands and casually scrolling my feed in the checkout line. What I have seen today is a lot of misinformation, ignorance, and panic from the Democrats. Go into any comment section, and the left is convinced redistricting is rigged, illegal, or proof that the republic is collapsing.
In today’s Brief:
Iran’s response to the U.S. peace plan: full sanctions lifted, frozen assets returned, sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz. Zero on nuclear.
Virginia Democrats are reportedly floating a plan to lower the state Supreme Court’s mandatory retirement age to 54. Subtle.
115,000 jobs in April, doubling expectations. Despite Iran, tariffs, and $1.50-a-gallon gas hikes.
Biden is suing to stop the release of the Hur tapes. The “transparency president” speedrun continues.
Trump lands in Beijing on Wednesday for the first U.S. presidential visit to China since 2017.
Tehran’s “Peace Offer” Reads Like a Ransom Note
Trump told Axios Sunday that Iran’s response to the latest U.S. ceasefire proposal is “inappropriate” and “totally unacceptable.” Then he hit Truth Social with the all-caps version: “TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!” Cool.
Here’s what Iran demanded in its counter, delivered through Pakistani mediators: full lifting of U.S. sanctions, end to the naval blockade, return of frozen assets, and sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz. The same strait where Iranian missiles hit three U.S. destroyers four days ago. Nuclear concessions? Not mentioned. Seems unacceptable to me.
Behind the scenes, Qatar is doing the heavy lifting. Rubio and Witkoff met Qatari PM Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani in Miami on Saturday. Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, and the Saudis are coordinating in tandem. Lindsey Graham, predictably, is back to floating Project Freedom Plus and military action. As he does.
Trump’s Truth Social post named the 47-year history: “Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and 1.7 Billion Dollars in green cash, flown into Tehran, was handed to them on a silver platter… They will be laughing no longer!”
You don’t have to love every Trump post to notice that handing Iran the same strait its missiles just lit up four U.S. ships in is not an acceptable peace offer.
Virginia Democrats Want to Retire the Court That Just Ruled Against Them
Last Friday, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that the Democrat-drawn congressional map violates the state constitution. The legislature blew through the constitutional amendment timeline. The map dies.
Then it got weirder. The New York Times reports that on a private Saturday call, Hakeem Jeffries and the Virginia House delegation discussed lowering (🎁 link) the state Supreme Court’s mandatory retirement age from 75 down to 54. Translation: clear every sitting justice in one move, then literally pack the bench with friendly Democratic appointees who would reinstate the gerrymander. Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, in favor: “Everyone has got to have a strong stomach right now.” Jeffries reportedly called for “maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time.”
The kicker: Former-AG Jason Miyares warned them in October 2025 the whole thing was unconstitutional. They blew through $70 million in taxpayer money anyway. Five million of that on the special election. The rest mostly went to attack ads defending what the court now calls null and void.
Even James Moran, a former Democratic congressman from Virginia, called the court-pack idea “a bridge too far.”
Tim Anderson @AssocAnderson My mailbox is full from many of you concerned that the Democrats may actually try to retire the Virginia Supreme Court to pack it with activists who will reverse the redistricting decision. They will not do that. Primarily even if they wanted to, they are out of time.
Anderson is right that the May 12 deadline kills any same-cycle relief. But the part to file away: the party that spent a decade lecturing the country about “threats to democracy” was on a Saturday call brainstorming how to retire a state Supreme Court because it ruled the wrong way.
115,000 Jobs in April, Despite Everything
April’s BLS report clocked 115,000 jobs added against a 65,000 forecast. Unemployment held at 4.3%. Health care +37K, transportation and warehousing +30K. Retail picked up another 22K. Wages climbed 3.6% year over year to $37.41 an hour. Federal employment dropped another 9,000, bringing the cumulative cut to 348,000 since the October 2024 peak. DOGE math.
Chris Zaccarelli at Northlight put it bluntly to the New York Post: “The economy is so much better than what the doom crew has been saying.”
Don’t ignore the soft underneath. The 3-month average is 48,000 jobs a month, per Politico’s read. Consumer sentiment hit a record low of 48.2. Part-time-for-economic-reasons jumped 445,000 to 4.9 million. Gas is up $1.50 a gallon since the Iran war started. Small and mid-sized businesses are eating margin.
So yes, the labor market is holding. And no, that doesn’t mean grocery aisles feel fine. Both are true.
Biden Is Going to Court to Bury the Hur Tapes
The DOJ told a federal court Friday it plans to hand over the redacted ghostwriter audio and transcripts to Congress and the Heritage Foundation. Roughly 70 hours of Biden talking to his ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer. Hur built the “elderly man with a poor memory” case off these recordings. He also concluded Biden read classified material aloud “nearly verbatim” three times.
Biden’s legal team plans to file by Tuesday to block release. If he files, DOJ holds off until June 15.
Spokesman TJ Ducklo’s line: “What’s happening now isn’t about transparency. It’s about politics.”
Biden, who ran on transparency. Now he’s fighting to keep audio recordings of classified notebook passages on lock. Heritage’s filing accused Biden’s lawyers of stonewalling for over a year, including blocking transcript sections that match exact phrases already quoted in the Hur Report.
Many will view this as old news; let’s move on. But the audio is what made Hur drop the case, citing an “elderly man with a poor memory.” We’ve all read the report. Hearing it will bring more color to Biden’s state of mind when he was President. If he were as bad as Hur claims, who was running the country?
Trump Heads to Beijing Wednesday
First U.S. presidential visit to China since 2017. Trump arrives Wednesday evening, bilateral with Xi Thursday and Friday, Temple of Heaven tour, state banquet, the whole bit.
Treasury Secretary Bessent already confirmed Iran will dominate the talks. The U.S. wants Beijing to lean on Tehran over Hormuz, which is rich since a Chinese-owned oil tanker just got hit there. Probable deliverables: a Boeing order, soybean and energy purchases, a Board of Trade and Board of Investment framework, and a possible rare-earths truce extension.
The interesting tea leaf is the CEO delegation. Roughly 12 confirmed, including Boeing’s Kelly Ortberg and Citigroup’s Jane Fraser. The 2017 trip had 30-plus CEOs signing $250 billion in deals. USTR Jamieson Greer reportedly pushed to halve this year’s list. China hawks have been nervous since the December Nvidia chip-export deal (the U.S. government took a 25% cut), and one anonymous White House source described Trump himself as “the biggest China dove in the administration.”
Trump has said publicly he will raise Jimmy Lai — the Catholic media tycoon serving 20 years for sedition — and Pastor Ezra Jin of Zion Church. Religious persecution on the official agenda is a genuine win to flag. Whether Beijing budges is a different question.
Quick Rundown
SCOTUS mifepristone deadline today, 5 PM. Alito’s one-week stay on the Fifth Circuit’s Louisiana v. FDA ruling expires at close of business. Either he extends it, lifts it, or grants cert. Whatever happens, mail-order mifepristone is on the table for the first time in a long time.
EEOC sues The New York Times over DEI hiring. Trump’s EEOC filed last Tuesday over a 2025 Deputy Real Estate Editor hire. The Times is now defending itself on “merit-based” grounds, which is something to watch from the paper whose opinion section has spent ten years arguing merit is a colonial fiction.
Violent crime is plunging across major U.S. cities. Per the MCCA Q1 2026 report: homicides down 17.7% nationally, robberies down 20.4%. D.C. down 64.7%, Philadelphia 54%, Aurora 66.7%, NYC 31.7% under Mamdani’s first months. The trend started under Biden and is continuing. Real, even if it complicates the federal-troops narrative.
Senate Democrats moving to repeal Trump’s grad-school loan cap. Merkley, Alsobrooks, and Bonamici are teaming up on a CRA resolution. UC Irvine already cut tuition on two business degrees by 20% in response to the cap. Education Under Sec Nicholas Kent: “It was never about helping students but rather buying votes.”
Pope Leo XIV signing his first encyclical Friday, May 15. “Magnifica Humanitas,” on AI, peace, and international law. Same date Leo XIII signed Rerum Novarum in 1891. The name choice and the date are both deliberate. Fuller piece Friday.
Let’s Talk About It
Two questions:
The Hur tapes: do you actually want to hear them, or would you rather not know?
Democrats are in full hysteria. If a sitting state Supreme Court can be retired by statute the moment it rules against the majority party, what's left of judicial independence?
Drop your takes in the comments. See you Wednesday.
The Brief publishes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Forward to someone who needs to understand what’s actually happening.